News

Congratulations to the following College of Education faculty for receiving a a 2023 Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) Classics Award for their book titled Critical Media Literacy and Civic Learning (EdTech Books, 2021): Bob Maloy, senior lecturer II Torrey Trust, associate professor of teacher education and curriculum studies Allison Butler, senior lecturer (Communications) EDUC doctoral student Chenyang Xu The MERLOT Awards program recognizes and promotes outstanding online resources designed to enhance teaching and learning and to honor the authors and developers of these resources for their contributions to the academic community. This ebook provides over 50 interactive multimodal explorations about media literacy and civic engagement through learning about key topics in United States Government and civic life. The core target is middle schools. Envelope

Are you a UMass Amherst faculty member with a research project idea that addresses public interest technology challenges while also reducing societal disparities? If so, we want to hear from you. February 1 is the submission deadline for PIT@UMass’ 2023 Faculty Fellowship Program.Approximately 7-11 Fellowships will be awarded in late February, with three of them being sponsored by the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS), Manning College of Information and Computer Science and Marieb College (CICS) of Nursing.The Fellowships, with the exception of the three sponsored awards, can relate to various areas. The three sponsored Fellowships will be expected to focus on activities specifically related to SBS, CICS or Nursing. Proposals can be in the amount between $5K-$8K. They can also complement existing funding from other UMass departments, schools, or colleges to incorporate public…

The paper titled “Role of Social Media in Social Protest Cycles: A Sociomaterial Examination,” written by Monideepa Tarafdar, Isenberg’s Charles J. Dockendorff Endowed Professor and PhD coordinator in information systems, and Deepa Kajal Ray, a data scientist with HSBC, was named winner of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) College of Senior Scholars Best Papers Award during the International Conference on Information Systems in Copenhagen in December. The paper was also named runner-up for best paper published in 2021 in the journal Information Systems Research. The work analyzed how, after a fatal gang rape in Delhi, a social media-led protest engulfed India and led to dramatic change. According to Tarafdar, the series of events provide a prototype for how protest cycles occur today. Read more.   Envelope

As a Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) member institution, UMass Amherst faculty and scholars are eligible to apply for a seat in a Wiki Scholars course focused on bolstering the availability and accuracy of information about public interest technology on Wikipedia. Selected participants will gain training on how to contribute content to Wikipedia and collaborate weekly over 6 weeks to create a public interest technology Wikipedia article and incorporate content into other relevant pages. Participants may work on content related to artificial intelligence, data privacy, criminal justice, climate justice, equity justice, critical structure access, or other topics. Learn more and apply.Questions can also be sent to PIT@UMass or to PIT-UN. Envelope

In the second edition of Tech in the News which took place during the first week of December, PIT@UMass started an interesting conversation about rethinking social media.  Moderated by Dr. Francine Berman, the conversation focused on two pivotal platforms - TikTok and Twitter.The session kicked off with Professor Hamed Zamani presenting his perspective on why TikTok is so addictive and providing a breakdown of the underlying factors that have contributed to the growing popularity of the app - the interactive, dynamic user interface and the behavior tracking algorithms that match content to user interest and its impact on industrializing virality.This was followed by a stirring talk by Professor Ethan Zuckerman tracing the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk. He stressed on the importance of the platform in terms of its text-based content, asymmetricfollower-following network. Zuckerman also stated…

With the theme “Tackling Climate-Induced Challenges with AI”, the Convergence Research (CORE) Institute, funded by the NSF Convergence Accelerator recently announced a collaborative convergence training program to address climate-related issues. The CORE Institute or Convergence Research Institute, part of the Convergence Accelerator’s Track D: AI-Driven Data Sharing and Modeling, provides graduate student, early-career and mid-career researchers and practitioners with the opportunity to gain convergent skills to identify use-inspired solutions to societal challenges through a six-week training program. The program is open to applicants from the public and private sectors as well as from academia and from nonprofit and non-governmental organizations, including AI experts, climate scientists, legislators and staffers, public policy professionals, climate activists, and researchers. Applicants can be in career phases ranging from graduate students to early and mid-career professionals. The Institute is receiving applications…